Refining My Writing Goal

 Why I Don't Want to Be A Great Novelist

For all my life since at least middle school, I've dreamt of becoming a world-famous author. I recognize that there's much that sounds like pride and vainglory in that statement, but the desire to write a book is something that has been with me for a long time. Though not the typical Anne Shirley-type writer, who needs to write, I've only just within the last year committed myself to write more regularly. 

First, I decided to start a journal to assist my memory of what happened from week to week. I don't always get to it daily, but I aim for as close to that as I can manage. In the late fall, I got off Facebook entirely; this freed up all sorts of time that I had been wasting online. In the spring, I spoke with my spiritual director and committed to writing 5 minutes every day in an attempt to discern if God wants something to grow out of my long-term desire to be an author. I'm now looking for resources to consult as I work to improve my writing skills, and one of those resources I read was called Women of the Catholic Imagination: Twelve Inspired Novelists You Should Know, edited by Haley Stewart, and published by Word on Fire.

As excited as I was to read this book, which had been given to me as a gift, I found myself settling into a train of thought I had not expected: I don't want to be a great novelist. This article is an attempt to clarify what I mean when I say those words.

Reading the Book

The book had lots of good things going for it: its subject was interesting, I am a fan of the editor, and I've appreciated the work of the Word on Fire Ministry and what they've started doing with books during the last five years. I was curious especially about the works of these "inspired" female authors and what it was that was so great about their writing. Essay by essay, I came to know a little bit about another incredible woman and her writing. Chapter by chapter, I grew less enchanted with the idea of being a "great writer." The reason for this experience of diminishing returns upon increased knowledge had to do with the brief encounters I was experiencing with the novels of these writers. I appreciated the brief glances I was treated to of the best writing each woman gave to the world, but those peeks were unsettling rather than encouraging.

Granted, many of the academics who contributed to this book made it quite clear that their subject did not write coddle her readers. For example, the works of Flannery O'Connor are not meant to be "encouraging"; they're intended to be the blunt force trauma to the head which enables the character - and the reader - to see reality for what it is. That is what these women were working at: the awakening of their readers to spiritual realities. As it turns out, the way these novelists primarily worked to make those spiritual realities capable of comprehension was through an investigation of the human state, particularly in its brokenness: the characters (often despicable) pursue their vices and reap the wages of their sin until the consequences - often extremely violent - shake them from the track they have been following.

Each academic explained the elements that made the writing of each novelist "great,"  but I was so burdened with the darkness of some of these stories that I had to skim quotes and even parts of the synopsis in some cases. At one point, I put the book down completely for a few days to allow myself the time to regain enough emotional equilibrium to finish it. In those final chapters, as I neared the time when I would close the cover on the last page, I realized that I needed to write about a conclusion I'd reached throughout this reading encounter.

The Novels I Enjoy

I still would like to be a great writer. I recognize now that I shouldn't pine to be world famous, but I certainly aspire to write well. However, I don't believe I want to be a great novelist, if being a great novelist means writing in the same way the women celebrated in Women of the Catholic Imagination wrote. They wrote with technical excellence and striking prose about universal themes: suffering, sin, life, death, reality, truth, redemption. I would like to do the same. However, when I write, I want my books to be of the sort that I would enjoy if I were a reader reading it.

I must be careful here, because I know that personal taste is not usually an indicator of a novel's worth. That's especially true of me, a sensitive reader who has managed to dislike a good majority of the serious classic novels she's sat down to read. However, the fact that there have been a few classics that I loved reading gives me hope that there is, perhaps, a narrow path that I can travel as I stretch my writing muscles. However, as the list below will show, these books have some marked differences from those that seem to gain the greatest acclaim as novels.

The fiction classics I enjoy sometimes fall in the category of "adventure story", but there are just as many that would go into a different genre. I will focus on the works that generally have adult audiences and greater literary merit. These works include:

- The Betrothed, by Alessandro Manzoni

- The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien

- the works of Jane Austen

- North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell

- Silas Marner, by George Eliot

- To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

- A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

The reason I love these books include: excellent plot, engaging characters, adventure, growth in virtue, heroic characters, deep and meaningful interpersonal interactions, and fantastic prose. These works are not fluff; they concern themselves with those universal themes one hopes to find in any classic. Some of them get into heavier topics, such as rape and racial hatred (To Kill a Mockingbird), just and humane conditions for laborers (North and South, A Christmas Carol), revenge (The Betrothed), and hope in the face of despair (The Lord of the Rings). These are qualities shared with the books written by the female novelists of Women of the Catholic Imagination.

However, the main differences that I can identify between my favorite classics and at least some of those of the female novelists are two: overall atmosphere and heroic characters. 

By atmosphere, I refer to the primary feeling that flavors the tale. Is it a story that is refreshing for the reader, even if there are difficult episodes? Is it a book that one looks forward to with anticipation because it engenders positive emotions in the reader, or is it one that a reader anticipates in the same way as someone who cranes their neck to see a car wreck ahead, determine what happened, and wonder who was at fault? Or is it even a book that a reader dreads because it presents its tale in the darkest and starkest colors? This is what I mean by "overall atmosphere." Based on the descriptions I read of many of the female Catholic novelists, it sounds like their works, by and large, dwell more in the "depressing atmosphere" camp than otherwise. The books I gravitate towards do not.

Regarding heroic characters: amongst those classics which I listed above, the only books in which the main character(s) start as despicable ones are Silas Marner and A Christmas Carol, and in both books, the author gets to work rehabilitating these characters in short order. Certainly, the main characters in the remaining books are not perfect, but they are likeable for the most part, even with their flaws, and do the work of growing in virtue or coming to terms with reality in the course of the book. Though harder to judge the characters in the novels of the Catholic women, my encounters with Flannery O'Connor's short stories focus uncomfortably on the corrupt and sinful tendencies of the characters. I know that's the point of her literary methods - but I really don't enjoy it. Some descriptions of the works by those other Catholic female novelists implied that the authors might have used the same strategy. I'm alright with having some pretty terrible people in the books I read - after all, there's not much plot if there's no villain in some stories - but focusing on the darkest corners of the human spirit don't make me look forward to picking up a book and reading it from cover to cover.

Insight

Doing this comparison/contrast between the classics I enjoy and the classics of the finest Catholic female novelists of the last century and a half has given me more peace than I originally had when I finished Women of the Catholic Imagination. Perhaps the greatest novelists trade heavily in dark themes and explorations of depravity. But, there are plenty of excellent novelists who explore deep, meaningful, and sometimes heavy topics with a lighter touch. I do not presume to say I'll ever be a great novelist, or even a near-par writer. However, I do think there is reason I can hope to improve my writing skills and find the works I produce satisfactory to me.

After all, it doesn't seem to me like the novelists in one group are actually superior to the others - they're just different. There are many ways to consider a classic, and while I find it important to try to understand what makes them "great," I by no means feel compelled to enjoy any given work. I cannot change my reading tastes on a whim, and I wouldn't want to. 

With this in mind, I feel confident in moving forward with writing the sort of stories I would enjoy reading. I do not have to suffer a sneaking suspicion that brilliant female Catholics are surreptitiously looking over my shoulder at my compositions and shaking their heads in disapproval. God provides a great variety to the scope of human creativity, and I am grateful to see now that I can stay true to the writing I believe He wants me to do, and hopefully, enjoy doing.